How to Nourish a Cannibal

From award-winning, bestselling poet Jess Housty, a collection that offers nourishment through land-based medicine and ancestral wisdom.

Following their critically acclaimed debut Crushed Wild Mint, Jess Housty offers a new collection capturing connections between kinship, ancestral knowledge and spirituality. Drawing on Heiltsuk supernatural beings like Báxvbakvalan̓usiwa (the Great Cannibal at the North End of the World), these poems encircle the idea of the cannibal, a complex figure who is at times dangerous but also a generous conduit for spiritual gifts. They tap into the poet’s own wildness, love and tenderness—and explore the sweet, agonizing anticipation of shared feasts, both from the land and of the body.

“Human desperately needs a new relationship with Nature that sustains us. Jess Housty guides us through different eyes.”

“If humans are to survive we must relearn to love, respect and protect nature, whose laws birth and cradle us in perfect abundance, not the scarcity our culture pretends. Jess Housty’s poems gently, joyfully and wisely explore and uphold a rich alternative. It will save us.”

“With breathtaking luminosity, Jess Housty brilliantly weaves potent and visceral imagery with supernatural wisdom and earth-shattering poetic skill. How to Nourish a Cannibal will change how you see, feel and breathe in the world.”